1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to distribution of content between individuals and content providers and, more particularly, to a system and method for distributing and communicating marketing information and other content to individuals over the internet who have opted to receive it.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various communication technologies have long been used by those desiring to market goods and services, educate, promote causes or issues, or otherwise disseminate information or “content.” The general objective of those providing this content is to have as many people as possible receive the content who may be interested in it, and to achieve this at the reasonably lowest cost. Advertising in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, on radio and television broadcasts are typical means used to reach a large audience. However, these means of communicating with the advertiser's audience are often annoying and intrusive.
The Internet has experienced enormous growth in the number of users and has become a means for content providers to disseminate their content to a large online audience. Email has become a vehicle for mass marketers to quickly reach a large audience at very low cost, by sending undirected and unsolicited marketing messages via email to hundreds of thousands of recipients at once. The resulting deluge of unwanted email messages has prompted internet users to disregard unsolicited messages or install software to filter out these messages. Banner ads and pop-up windows are other means commonly used by advertisers to display their message to world wide web users. As with unsolicited email, these devices have become an annoying and intrusive distraction which many users have become accustomed to ignoring.
From the user's point of view, such techniques force them to face a large volume of unsolicited and irrelevant information which includes offers for goods and services and other information in which they have no interest. Content providers who engage in such techniques risk alienating more consumers than they convert, and these techniques provide very low “hit” rates of consumers who actually go on to purchase an advertised product or act on the information provided.
However, consumers are increasingly turning to the world wide web to find information and to shop for goods and services. Search engines have become increasingly popular tools for consumers to sort through the vast amount of content on the web to find what information that is relevant and useful to them. However, such searches often suffer from intrusion by advertisers. Misleading meta-tags built into web sites can cause a search engine to list an irrelevant web site in the search results, and payments from advertisers to search engine providers and search engine key word brokers are routinely used to cause a certain advertiser's web site to be listed prominently in the search results.
Consumers rely on marketing messages to steer them in making nearly every transaction they perform. However, what is required is a new marketing paradigm which does not rely on bombarding consumers with unsolicited messages and that does not present irrelevant information to the consumer.